


Airtight

by Gamemakers



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Indiana Jones, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:08:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23834371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gamemakers/pseuds/Gamemakers
Summary: Egypt, 1937. Dr. Katniss Everdeen, well-respected Egyptologist and professor of archaeology, knows she has made the discovery of a lifetime the instant she steps inside the tomb. What she doesn't realize is that Peeta Mellark has beaten her to it... or the danger that awaits them both.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 54
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

The air down here was musty, and though she knew that this place had been sealed airtight for the last three thousand years, she still expected to see cobwebs every time she shined her flashlight down a new corridor. Katniss paused for a moment to admire the hieroglyphs. The craftsmanship here was exceptional. She’d spent the last ten years between the dig sites and her post at Marhsall College, and only once or twice had she seen anything comparable.

She fumbled for her camera. Everything needed to be recorded as she found it. The Supreme Council of Antiquities was very strict on that point, and in any case, she would want copies for her own files. Her flashlight dropped, its light suddenly gone. “Shit,” she whispered, though there was no one else about to hear. She couldn’t get on her hands and knees to search for it, not here. Yes, she had matches, but she really didn’t want to burn them in here if she could help it.

But if she could just… _there_. Katniss could just make out the shape of her flashlight, a black just ever so slightly deeper than the shadows surrounding it.

Wait, this tomb had been sealed for millennia, and by now, she was far from the entrance she and her team had discovered the day before. There shouldn’t be enough light to see even that. Katniss waited to turn on her flashlight, instead trying to figure out which direction the light came from. Once she found it, she clicked her light on and followed the narrow, mazelike tunnel towards the source. All the while, she checked the walls for anything out of place. This wouldn’t be the first time she ran into booby traps deep within the tombs.

She walked such a long ways and rounded so many corners that Katniss was certain she must be going in circles. Still, none of the walls looked familiar, and she couldn’t find her way back now. Best to keep going and see where her path took her.

Katniss immediately knew that this room was special. Easily ten meters tall, it was big enough to swallow her little house in Bedford ten times over. Its designers had covered every surface with the most beautiful ornamentation she had ever seen. Gold, jewels, a golden boat large enough to fit thirty people, everything she could dream of was here. She could make an entire career, ten careers, just off the contents of this single room, but the light still compelled her forward. Worry knotted deep in her stomach, and she wanted to run,

She froze when she saw him. The man did not turn to look at her, instead continuing to stare up at the enormous sarcophagus. “Hello? Sir?” He didn’t move, not even a hair. Katniss took another step forward. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

Still no reply. She flicked her flashlight away from the man to survey the rest of the room. Just like the other rooms, the walls were beautifully decorated. Katniss spent a long moment studying a scene of farmers on the banks of the Nile, a gorgeous example of eighteenth-dynasty craftsmanship. Her breath caught in her chest when she saw the next panel, and she felt she should pinch herself to be certain she wasn’t dreaming. Katniss’ jaw hung open at the mural of the sun disc Aten, and the two figures seated before him. Akhenaten’s tomb had long since been discovered, and that could leave only…

She looked up towards the sarcophagus again. The high cheekbones, the long neck, Katniss knew this face.

Nefertiti. She had found Nefertiti. A huge grin spread, unbidden, across her face, and she felt the oddest urge to laugh. This was what she had dreamt of from the moment she first stepped into Oxford twenty-odd years ago. A find easily as great as that of Tutankhamen, and it was hers. She would have to share it with the rest of the world eventually, of course, such a discovery couldn’t be kept for one person alone, but for now…

She turned her flashlight back towards the man, who still hadn’t moved. For now, she had to share. He had been staring up at that sarcophagus for long enough. Surely he could spare her a minute or two of his precious time. Katniss had met more than her fair share of chauvinistic men too bullheaded to let any woman, even a well-respected archaeologist with several papers to her name, even near their dig sites, but none had ever gone so far as to pretend not to hear her before. And certainly none had ever broken into her dig and tried to claim the fortune and glory that came with success for himself. “Excuse me,” she said, “are you looking for something?” She tapped him on the shoulder, and she was surprised to find that his skin was cold. A chill went down her spine, and suddenly, Katniss felt as if she was being watched.

“Excuse me.” She tried his hand next, found it just as cold as his shoulder had been. The man could have been carved of stone. He was handsome enough, if not in the lithe, youthful way that eighteenth-dynasty Egyptians had preferred. He was perhaps ten years older than her, probably in his later forties compared to her thirty-nine. Gray hair still tinged with blonde stuck up every which way, a remnant of the strong winds that blasted through the Valley of the Kings, and she had to stop herself from smoothing it down. His shirt was old. Not worn, just old. She hadn’t seen anything in that style since she was a child, and even then, it had long since been out of style. When she touched the fabric, it was stiff, as if it had been hanging the same way for years. Were it not for his lamp, still lit and with enough oil left to last several hours, she might have thought him as much a statue as the sarcophagus behind her.

Katniss set her flashlight down a safe distance away and put her hands on his shoulders, and, ignoring the sound of sand dropping, pushed him just a few degrees away from where he had been staring. Immediately, his skin warmed beneath her fingers. She watched, dumbstruck, as he blinked and lowered his lantern.

“Who are you?” His voice had that clipped, upper-class British accent that so many of the older archaeologists retained.

She shook her head, unable to find the words to introduce herself.

He switched to Arabic and tried again. “Who are you? Can you speak English?”

“Yes,” she answered, extending a hand for him to shake. “Katniss Everdeen. This is my dig site. And you are?”

He took her hand, and something warm and pleasant curled low in her stomach. “Peeta Mellark. Pleased to meet you.”

The sound of sand hitting the floor was louder now. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

“What?” His eyes widened. “We need to get out of here.” He pulled on her hand, tugging her towards the door. Katniss pushed his hand away and leaned down to retrieve her flashlight. By now, it was deafening, and the room itself seemed to rumble.

She screamed when the first stone fell only inches in front of her. “Keep going! Run!” Peeta shouted.

Katniss jumped over the rock and hurried out into the corridor. Peeta paused for a second at the threshold, and she could practically see the thought process play out before her as he contemplated going back for the treasure. “No, don’t,” she said, grabbing his wrist and pulling him out into the antechamber.

The sound was no less overpowering out here. Her heart pounded as rocks fell all around them, destroying the priceless treasures buried here to accompany Nefertiti to the afterlife. Some them by as little as an inch, but they could not stop. The shaky light of Katniss’ flashlight guided their path, and together, they scrambled through the winding corridors, neither daring to let go of the other’s hand for fear they would be lost forever. A stone clipped her shoulder, and she stumbled, but an instant later Peeta was hauling her back up to her feet. “Come on. We need to keep going.”

Everything was speeding up now. The rocks fell more and more quickly, and they had increased in size from pebbles to bricks and boulders. Peeta’s foot was nearly crushed beneath one the size of her Model T.

They weren’t going to make it. It was too much, too fast. No one escaped the wrath of the pharaoh. But now the only light she saw was not that of her flashlight, and though her body begged her to stop, Peeta still sprinted, dragging her half a step behind. They might, they just might make it, and -

After hours spent in the cold, still air of the tomb, the heat was welcome. Katniss leaned her head back and allowed the sun to bathe her face in its warmth. “We made it,” Peeta said, and it sounded as much like a question as it did a statement.

She grinned, and laughter bubbled up from some hidden well inside her. “Yes!”

“We really made it.” Amazement, now. He hugged her tight against him and did some kind of strange, shuffling dance. “We made it!”

“Yeah.” She ought to say something more, but it’s all she could think. They were alive. There’s no reason they should be, but by some sweet grace of God, they were.

Peeta’s next words pulled her from that happy daze. “Pardon my asking, but what were you doing down there?”

“Excuse me? I think I’m the one who should be asking you that.”

He looked genuinely puzzled. “This is my dig site. I’ve been working here for months.”

He was lying. She had been here since April, and her crew had hardly seen more than a handful of other archaeologists about. Handsome as he was, there was no chance she would have forgotten about him. But then she remembered his odd, old-fashioned shirt and the way he had been so still, almost frozen before the statue. “When did your dig start?”

“November.”

“Of what year?”

Peeta’s forehead creased in confusion. “Eighteen ninety-eight, of course. Last year.”


	2. Chapter 2

Unlike many of the rooms she had been in since they reported their findings to the Egyptian authorities, this did not appear to be a jail. Prints of crocodiles basking on the banks of the Nile hung on the wall, and she spotted one or two of her own books among the hundreds of texts on the tall bookshelves before her. But high-backed leather chairs and the elaborate silver tea service set up on the desk made this no less of an interrogation.

“You say that you come from the past.” Dr. Terek Mahmoud’s voice had been deepened by decades of smoking, but he sounded no weaker for it. “Tell me, why should I believe you?”

“As I’ve told the police over and over again, I’m willing to give you any information that would help you confirm my identity. I’ve asked you to contact my colleagues at Oxford who might be able to remove any confusion, and you’ve refused.” This was the first time Peeta had allowed any of his irritation to show through. She was impressed with his patience. She had reached that point nine days ago, approximately half an hour after they had been rewarded for alerting the appropriate authorities of the tomb’s destruction by being deposited in jail cells.

She had begged for an appointment with Dr. Mahmoud. Her interactions with the director of the Supreme Council on Antiquities had been few and far between, but he had always struck her as reasonable, and he had an unparalleled knowledge on anything related to the eighteenth dynasty. If they had any hope of being cleared of wrongdoing, Mahmoud was it.

“What you say is impossible.” Well, there went that last ounce of hope. Katniss wished she had enjoyed her last bath more thoroughly. She expected it would be a long while before she had the opportunity again.

Peeta barely avoided kicking over his chair as he rose. “Why would we –“

“You’re right,” she said. The two men looked at her in surprise. “It is impossible. People can’t be frozen in time for decades. That goes against everything we understand about our world.” Katniss’ blood pounded in her veins as she met Mahmoud’s eyes. Though she had at least outwardly managed to keep her calm this far, her words began to speed up. “But whether or not you choose to believe it, that’s what happened. And instead of investigating what’s down there, you’re wasting time trying to convince us, the ones who experienced it firsthand, that we’re ly –“ At a flash in Dr. Mahmoud’s face, Katniss swallowed the rest of the word.

“That we have misunderstood the situation or hallucinated the matter entirely,” Peeta supplied.

Katniss nodded at his words. Much more diplomatic than she could be.

“And though we believe these events occurred in the manner that we have described many times over the last few days, we, I think quite reasonably, find ourselves with many unanswered questions.” Peeta’s gaze flicked over to Katniss, searching for approval.

“I certainly do,” she backed him up, keeping her voice carefully even.

Peeta turned back to Dr. Mahmoud. “I understand your doubts, but you cannot disagree that this find could be of massive historical significance. I hope that you will allow Dr. Everdeen and I to assist the Supreme Council on Antiquities as you uncover Nefertiti’s tomb. At least allow us to direct you to the exact locations of our respective dig sites so that your men know where to start looking.”

Mahmoud struck a match to light his pipe, and the deep scent of expensive tobacco became even more prominent. He leaned back in his high-backed chair as he studied them, taking long drags from his pipe. Katniss counted beats of the ceiling fan, the only sound that broke the silence of the room.

The director blew a thick cloud of smoke up towards the ceiling before he straightened. “We leave in the morning,” he said. “You will assist us in reversing the damage you have caused in this country.”

Katniss had not realized how much tension she had been carrying in her shoulders until she felt them relax.

“Thank you.” Peeta’s voice held the same relief, and she could not entirely hold back a grin.

* * *

Even the military-grade tires on the Supreme Council’s vehicle could not smooth out this road. Katniss held on tight to avoid being thrown out of the open cab as the car lurched over an enormous pothole, and after a terrifying moment spent airborne, she slammed back into her seat with a grunt.

Peeta didn’t seem bothered at all by the bumpy ride. He stared out over the desert, entranced, and Katniss leaned over to appreciate the sight as well. She had made this journey from Cairo to Luxor so many times that she hardly saw the scenery anymore, but looking on it with new eyes, she was struck by the vibrancy of the desert, the way the sand sparkled as it reflected the sunlight.

“It’s beautiful.” She didn’t realize she was speaking until the words were already out. Katniss caught herself. “Has it changed much?”

Peeta turned to her. “The landscape? No, I don’t think so, though I’ve always made this journey by train or on horseback.” He stuck his hand out of the car, feeling the air whoosh past his fingertips. “I wasn’t aware enough to enjoy the novelty of the automobile ride last time.”

The car bucked underneath them, and Katniss was sent flying towards him. Strong arms wrapped around her, keeping her still as the car rumbled over the rough patch of gravel. “And though I’ll argue that every Egyptologist ought to travel to Luxor on horseback at least once, automobiles certainly have their advantages.”

Katniss hoped he couldn’t see how her cheeks pinked as she slid back into her seat.

“What area have you been excavating?” Between the wind and the gravel beneath the wheels, Mahmoud had to shout for his words to reach the back seat. Hopefully, that meant he hadn’t overheard their earlier exchange.

“It’s about a mile and a half south of here.” Katniss pushed herself up towards the front seat. “See that ridge?” She pointed out towards an imposing natural rock formation. “We’ll have to hike down to the tomb itself. Right over there is about as close as we can get without going into the valley.”

Mahmoud relayed her instructions to the driver in Arabic, and they parked in the shade of the tower. Katniss hoisted her pack – thankfully, the authorities had given it back to her when she insisted she would need the map inside to find the exact location of her dig, even if it wasn’t exactly true - onto her back and jumped out of the car. Something in her neck popped as she stretched her arms up above her head. After spending six hours in the car, she was grateful just to stand up for a while.

“We have no time to waste.” Mahmoud pointed down into the valley. “Show us the way.”

“Right. Come on, then.” She started down, Peeta only steps behind her.

Katniss had first visited the Valley of the Kings at nineteen, and in her annual visits since, she had come to think of the necropolis as a second home. Though the valley held its underground secrets tightly, the scenery itself was beyond familiar - or at least it had been. Though she was only halfway down, and she could barely spot her dig site in the distance, Katniss felt something off.

“Stay close,” she murmured to Peeta, quiet so Mahmoud and the driver, who had fallen behind, could not overhear them.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Waiting for Mahmoud, whose breathing had already become labored from the exertion of their trek, Katniss took a long moment to survey the environment. On the surface, nothing seemed out of place, but an odd tension burned in the air.

“We’re getting close,” she informed the others. “Due north, two hundred yards. You can just make out where the stones fell.” Katniss traced the outline of what had been the entrance to the tomb with her fingertips.

The other three squinted in the direction she pointed, but she saw no flashes of recognition. Katniss dug into her pack and pulled out her binoculars. She peered into them and spent a few seconds adjusting the focus before she offered them to Mahmoud. “Do you see the rock pile?” she asked.

The director scanned over the area. “Yes, there - ah yes, very good.” He studied the spot intently through the binoculars. “Is there anything else the council needs to be aware of before we begin our excavation?”

She shook her head. “We’ve told you everything we know.”

“Good. Back to the car, then. With some luck, we can be back in Cairo before nightfall.”

“I thought you might have a team assembled and prepared to start digging,” Peeta said to Mahmoud.

“I do, but I needed to know the precise location of Dr. Everdeen’s dig site before we began.” There was an edge to his voice that did nothing to ease Katniss’ nervousness. The man finally returned her binoculars with a broad forced smile.

“Where are they? Surely it would be best if Dr. Everdeen could explain how she reached the entrance, so they don’t encounter the same traps.”

“No, no. I will relay the location to them later tonight. Hurry now. I want to rest.”

Ever obedient, Katniss started up the hill again at lightning pace. Peeta stayed hot on her heels, and they had quickly left Mahmoud behind.

“What’s he hiding?” Peeta asked.

“I don’t know, but I feel it too.” Katniss glanced behind them to make sure Mahmoud and the driver were out of sight. “Cover me for a moment.”

Peeta nodded in reply, and she hurried toward the ledge. From here, she had a clear view of much of the valley. Katniss carefully studied the landscape, cataloging every peculiarity. To the south, she caught a strange glint of metal. She pawed frantically through her bag for the binoculars, dropping the pack to the ground as soon as she located them. Already, she was directing them toward the source of the reflection.

“Found something?” Peeta’s voice was quiet.

“I think I might have found Mahmoud’s team.” She refocused her binoculars, revealing a convoy of eight trucks, the largest of which sported an all-too-familiar red emblem on its side.

“Nazis.” The word felt like a curse on her tongue, and in some ways, she supposed it was. Katniss lowered her binoculars and blew a loose piece of hair off her forehead. “I hate these guys.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the change in rating 😉

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted sometime in 2016 on FFN. Intended as a oneshot, but I have a longer story outlined that I might write up someday. Subscribe if you're interested, and thanks for reading!


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